Baker Hughes gets $640m Iraqi drilling deal

Baghdad, December 20, 2011

Iraq awarded a $640 million deal to US oil service company Baker Hughes to drill 60 wells in the southern Zubair oilfield, a government spokesman said on Tuesday.

The Iraqi cabinet approved the Oil Ministry's request to award the three-year contract to the US company, Ali Al-Dabbagh said in a statement.

Italy's ENI, US-based Occidental Petroleum Corp and South Korea's Kogas have signed a 20-year deal with Iraq to develop Zubair. They set an eventual output target of 1.2 million barrels per day.

Iraq has struck a series of development contracts with global oil companies in a bid to more than quadruple its oil output potential to 12 million bpd, which could also signal a bonanza for oil service companies.

In August, Russian oil company Lukoil awarded Baker Hughes a two-year contract to provide full drilling and completion services for 23 wells in the West Qurna Phase Two field in southeast Iraq.

Baker Hughes opened an operations base in Iraq's southern oil hub city of Basra last year. - Reuters